Although Invisible War was a decent game, it failed to live up to its name as a Deus Ex sequel.  The game wasn't bad but in an attempt to simplify many of the mechanics of the original Deus Ex it removed much of what made it unique.  So the question commonly asked on the internet was... would Eidos Montreal create a worthy prequel to the original Deus Ex?

Yes.  Yes they did.

Gameplay in Human Revolution feels just like it should - like an updated version of the original DX.  The free-form augmentation system is fantastic, letting you buy whatever you want whenever you want as long as you have the Praxis for it.  This does have a downside in that some players are reporting being overwhelmed by all the options at the beginning of the game but once past that the system provides a great deal of flexibility in customizing your gameplay experience.

Open sesame.

And let's be clear on one point - this is not some half-complete console port.  I play games on the PC and nothing is more frustrating than dealing with limited ports from console-driven control design.  I'm looking at you, Borderlands!  Human Revolution is not a halfway complete console port.  Kudos to Eidos Montreal did a fantastic job making me feel like they created an actual PC gaming experience.

On the story side of things I was very satisfied with how things progressed.  There were a few twists that were telegraphed a little too much but for the most part the overarching narrative and the conspiracy it centers on kept me entertained throughout my playthrough, aided by two features.  One was the side missions which I could pick up as  break from the plot which expanded on the setting, and two was the discovery-based nature of how the setting itself is presented to you.

There are a number of locked doors and computers in HR which serve no other purpose than to allow you to access setting background information through pocket secretaries, ebooks, and emails.  Some gamers might think this is a waste of time but not only did finding them enrich the HR experience, it drew a number of connections between HR and the original DX.  Emails from Manderly and news reports implying the future founding of UNATCO for instance have no effect on the plot but help cement HR firmly within the DX universe.

There has been one criticism leveled against HR that I think is fair.  Unlike in the original DX, there is no way to resolve HR's "boss fights" with nonviolent or even nonlethal means.  It would have been interesting to have these other options, but considering some of the later plot points of HR it makes sense that Adam Jenson didn't have access to the methods JC Denton used to defeat some of his more memorable adversaries.

But with that said, my reaction at the end of the game is a statement on how much I enjoyed it.  When faced with all four possible endings before me, I sat there and thought about it.  I knew I could just reload the game and pick the different endings to see them all (and ultimately I knew I would) but I still wanted to decide which I would choose first; which would by "my canonical ending."

Problem was there was no good ending - I felt like I was trying to choose the least of four evils.  And that only mattered to me, I realized, because I had become invested enough in the story to care how it ended.

As a side note, it's been revealed that Eidios Montreal is currently working on Thief 4.  If they can for for Thief what they did for Deus Ex then I'm going to be throwing more money their way soon.

But as I mentioned in my Backburst post, a few months ago my Saturday group and I started playing Magic to pass the time until everyone arrived for the weekly role-playing session.  If you're like me, you've heard of the $500 decks and the craziness that goes into playing in tournaments, but that's not what we're looking to do. With just our modest collections we've put together a few decks each, which has been enough to provide a great side game to play casually and socialize over.

It's been somewhat surprising to see how much fun the group is having just playing casually. A few members were a little leery at first, but when no one tries to win through strength of wallet it's a good time. Unlike our role-playing, where there's a story going on at the table that banter could interrupt, Magic can be an even more social experience for us since we can talk over the game with no ill effect.

Since there's almost always more of two of us ready to play, we've tried a number of formats. Standard multiplayer is a bit to long and random, but we've had a lot of fun running alternate formats, specifically Two-Headed Giant (or Three-Headed if we have 6 players) and Emperor. Emperor in particular has been a ton of fun even when you're the first one out (aka drink fetcher ).

Considering I've heard Warmachine and Hordes described as the Magic: the Gathering of miniatures games, it shouldn't be a surprise that I'm enjoying the deckbuilding and combo-based gameplay. My current favorite deck is my White/Green Ally deck, which could be thought of as the Protectorate of Menoth deck with it's cheap cards that build crazy synergies.

That and the fact that opponents seem to hate playing against it, which is why I tend to play my other two decks more. We're just playing to have fun, I'm not looking to bash any heads in so I'm happy just to play whatever and socialize with my friends.

I'm not going to say Magic is a game that everyone must play, but I am a little surprised how much fun we're getting out of it. For the cost of a pair role-playing books (or a light jack and a small-based unit) we've got a great side game for our group; it's hard to complain about that.

Mordheim's strength has always been the aspect of play where yoru warband gains experience and suffers injuries as you continue to play it. Unfortunately the customizability and organic warband evolution was tempered by a clunky system and obtuse rulebook. So we decided to give Coreheim a try.

Half of the players had played Mordheim before, but for most of them it was the first time assembling the warband of their choice. We went with a team game over a free-for-all to speed things along, so we had the Undead, Posessed, and Night Goblins against Reiklanders, Witch Hunters, and Skaven in a straight-up brawl. After the forces closed, both sides started suffering attrition fairly quickly.

The Reiklanders who held the center of their lines were the first to fail a rout check after their leader fell to the Undead warband's vampire. Soon the Witch Hunters - who had flanked my Possessed that had come up the middle to help the Undead with the Rieklanders - caused enough damage that my band failed their command check as well, followed quickly by the Skaven and Night Goblins. The Undead and Witch Hunters started grinding down to start forcing rout checks and in the end the Witch Hunters failed first, giving the Undead force's allegiance side the victory.

Overall it was a fun night of gaming. Our first stab at the Coreheim rules went well enough to try them again in the future. None of us play Warhammer, so the move towards a slightly more War of the Ring-based rule system hasn't been a problem for us. That said, one of my biggest problems overall was the slowness of models in Mordheim compared to the long missile ranges. While Coreheim shrunk missile ranges somewhat, they also shortened movement, something we'll likely undo when we play again.

The Coreheim ruleset did have some downsides, like the movement reduction listed above.  In addition some of the short articles the Corheim web site do not come off very mature.  I don't want to be too harsh, but the authors are doing themselves a disservice with those documents.

Even so, there's still some interesting concepts in Corheim that I think we'll be able to tweak into something that works better for us.  Mordheim's a now-and-then game for us though, so it might be a while before we can put theory into practice again.

Now then, it's been a couple months since I mentioned looking forward to playing Borderlands, so I thought I should post a follow-up. I played the game pretty intensely for a while, running through two playthroughs on my first character, a Siren, once as a Soldier, and a little as the other two classes. Most of my gameplay was single player but I got in quite a few multiplayer sessions with a couple of my friends that were a blast.

From skag hunting to fighting off the denizens of the Eridian Promontory, the game as a whole was extremely fun. It wasn't without its issues but unfortunately that seems to be standard for PC games nowadays. Regardless of some of the minor issues, I got more than my money's worth on Pandora.

For starters the mission-based system lets you hop in and out of the game for shorter sessions and still feel like you were accomplishing something. It also meant a fairly steady influx of quest XP so you never really felt like you were stagnant. Between the short quests and the fact that enemies respawned, you were always able to just go out throw lead around whenever you felt like it.

The ability to rearrange your character's skills and the ease of doing so (it just costs money, which is plentiful) really let you play around with customizing your character as you go. There was more than one occasion where I'd find a weapon or class mod that suited a certain playstyle so would just re-spec and switch over whenever I wanted.

It's hard to find a Borderlands forum where people aren't complaining about the end of the game. I admit it's the weakest point of the story, but Borderlands isn't about telling some grand epic, it's about giving you a gun to go shoot things and take their stuff. It's unabashedly a bullet-driven character-building engine, and in that regards it succeeds at its goals.

The biggest problem with Borderlands on the PC out-of-the-box was its multiplayer capabilities. It uses GameSpy as its multiplayer client, which caused all sorts of headaches for my friends and me. I heard many players using third party VPN-like products to get multiplayer working, but proper port forwarding fixed our issues, though it was still a hassle that we shouldn't have had to go through.

The first two DLCs for Borderlands were released a little while back, and there's where you start to see the problems with the game - or more likely the publishing company. The PC version was delayed for some time (as were patches for the base game) and when it was finally released, it included SecuROM. In fact, the latest Borderlands patch on Steam actually installed the Borderlands SecuROM files on your computer whether you wanted it or not, it just left them inactive until you added the expansion pack.

That was pretty much the end of Borderlands for my friends and me.  With other games being released that we wanted to play, we didn't really see the need to mess with SecuROM.  SecuROM itself isn't a dealbreaker for me, but there are so many other options out there at the moment that I don't have to mess with it to be entertained.  It was the last straw for the two gamers I usually played online with though.  After struggling with their multiplayer connectivity issues SecuROM was enough for them to bail completely.

According to Steam I've logged over 100 hours of Borderlands, and I've enjoyed every minute of it.  The game isn't complex and the story isn't deep, but it's just fun.  My only concern is that Gearbox seems to be looking to continue released DLC for it and if they want to succeed, they're going to need to make sure that they can ditch the SecuROM that's been convincing players not to continue to buy their products.

Half the dungeon, post-smite.

Since my Sunday gaming group is waiting for after Christmas to kick off our upcoming campaign, Hardarian Blackleaf, Ale, Mr. Wizard Nickelbane III, and Elfin John continued their Quest (tm) to become Heroes (tm).   The story was thin but the cardstock terrain was thick as... well... cardstock.   And so the smiting commenced!

We ran through a couple more pretty generic quests this week - find a good wizard then go kill the evil one.  Considered we played Are You the Traitor? beforehand (which features a good/evil wizard mechanic) I suppose there was a theme running throughout the evening.

At this point the party is getting pretty well equipped.  The one oddness to the game is that it follows the D&D trope of "the wizard can't use cool equipment."  So while the dwarf, elf, and barbarian all have shields, helms, and armor (the barbarian even has artifact armor) and good weapons, the wizard is stuck with a weak magic cloak he found and a pointy stick (read: quarterstaff).  He's been collecting some interesting magic items, but he's still the weak link of the party and will crumple if the monsters get to him.

The gargoyle smites Elfin John!

Camp is still the name of the game.  Moondog has been the best Zargon of the group hands down.  Among his achievements is composing the soundtrack known as "march of the mummy."  We always know when a mummy is coming at us.

Moondog missed this week, so I tried to add my own twist this weekend with moonwalking, "Thriller"-singing chaos warriors (and completely silent zombies, just 'cause).  Unfortunately I fell short of Moondog's greatness.

There are only five more quests left, but we're taking our time.  Hero Quest is a fun game to play for nostalgic reasons and we don't want to take it too seriously or risk getting burnt out.  But as a occasional diversion it's still two thumbs up.

The Heroes(tm) on a Quest(tm)

While my role-playing group is between campaigns, we're filling our weekly sessions with boardgames and one-shots.  Last week was a blast from the past: Hero Quest by Milton Bradley.  I couldn't find the doors and a few figures were MIA (the elf in particular) and had to be proxied, but the old school charm remained.

Matt took on the role of the vile Zargon for the first two quests, leaving Chad, Wayne, and me to take on the mantles of the Elf (Elfen John), Wizard (Mr. Wizard), and Barbarian (Thud).  The Dwarf (Ale) was thrown in for good measure.  For the third and final game I took over behind the screen and Matt claimed the Dwarf.

We fully embraced the camp of the game, with "Zargon" reading the boxed text before each adventure with as much melodrama as could be mustered.  As casually as we treated the game, our role-playing roots came through and there were a few more descriptions than dictated by the adventure book as we stomped around the dungeon, hacking up orcs, goblins, and other minions of Chaos.

Wayne Nukes the gobbos

The first adventure was a fun re-introduction to combat, but things got interesting at the end of the second quest.  When you enter the prison room of the NPC you have to save, all of the monsters remaining in the dungeon are immediately put on the board and start activating while you try and get him to the exit stairs.

It was actually a lot of fun, but you could tell we were all MMO players of various experience.  Chad immediately blew a spell to walk through the nearby wall and defensive buff himself to block the choke point, while I ran to the other.  Wayne and the Dwarf provided support as we just held up the lines while our escort got the heck out.

Then we slaughtered all the goblins and took their stuff.

Even though as a group we enjoy the role-playing side of our weekly game, it was fun to have a weekend of mindless hack and slash.  We decided to keep the characters around and break the game back out from time to time whenever a role-playing game is canceled at the last minute.  Maybe I'll finally have the chance to see all 14 quests that come with the game.

Maybe I'll even be able to find the doors.

Borderlands has been described as a FPS version of Diablo II, which is a fairly accurate description.  You are given a choice of one of four classes, each of which has three skill trees which you can choose from to customize your character to your liking.  Loot seems to be a big part of the game, and the constant variety keeps you engaged by ensuring there's always the possibility of something better than what you have dropping from the next enemy.

Especially now that the XBox version of the game has been released, there are plenty of videos on youtube, as well as Borderlands' own web site showing game play off, but the one that was the most helpful to me was a co-op playthrough I found on giantbomb.com.  This half-hour video features four-player co-op play and some accompanying discussion by one of the players an observer.  The discussion answers some related questions and discusses aspects of play that weren't directly shown and is very informative.  There are also screenshots and videos on the Borderlands site, as well as the skill tree for each of the four classes for anyone who wants more information.

After doing some reading, I think I'm going to try out the Siren as my first character.  Apparently I was the last person to decide what as I was going to play.  To paraphrase a discussion I had over IM with a friend I'll be playing Borderlands with:

Me:  BTW... I'm thinking siren in borderlands
MD:  LOL no kidding.  I already knew that Fishboy would be Mordecai, You'd be Lilith, Rav would be Roland and I'd be Brick.  'Cuz those are our universal archetypes.
Me:  Heh.  Wait... I'm a chick?
MD:  me = do that one thing, Rav = do it all, Fishboy = be a ninja, you = be a fucking bastard shitcock sneaky twink 

I guess that makes sense... I am a Legion player after all.

Looks like Clear Sky is going to move up my to-play list.

Scavenger, Trespasser, Adventurer, Loner, Killer, Explorer, Robber

I while back I finished playing through S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. I picked the game up when it was on sale on Steam and have thoroughly enjoyed it.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. takes place in "The Zone," the area surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant where a second nuclear disaster lead to the appearance of physics-defying anomalies and the artifacts they produce.  You play as an amnesic Stalker plying your trade (artifact retrieval) while trying to piece together your past. Along the way you'll have to contend with  anomalies, radiation, hunger, military forces trying to lock down the Zone, bandits, and mutated... things.

In-Game HUD

I'd characterize S.T.A.L.K.E.R. primarily as an FPS but there are aspects of other genres thrown in. Depending on your play style stealth can be extremely important. There's also an inventory system that demands you manage your weapons, armor, and equipment closely. You want the best that you can find but you also want to be able to carry your loot out of the ruins. There are artifacts you collect which can grant different bonuses to you, most of which also have penalties if you equip them, making them a mixed blessing. However with the variety of artifacts you come across and the limited "slots" to equip them (only five) you can mix and match to gain net positives in most areas with little difficulty.

Inventory - Early Game

Weapon acquisition, selection, and customization can be a large part of the game since ammo calibers can vary wildly between weapon models. If you can't find any rounds for the new assault rifle you picked up then it's just going to be dead weight. And even if you have ammo, if it can't accept the scope and grenade launcher attachment that you have on your current rifle, is it worth the upgrade? On more than one occasion I've chosen a slightly weaker gun just because I could max out its attachments and I knew enemies in the area carried compatible ammo I could use.

Inventory - Late Game

One of the reasons that weapon choice plays a large part in your game experience is that you're not always guaranteed to hit what's under your cross hairs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The accuracy of your firearm plays a large role in determining how precise your shot is, as well as your physical state - walking provides a significant penalty while crouching provides a bonus. Your right mouse button also 'aims' with whatever hardware the gun has, increasing accuracy but lowering your movement speed. On the defensive side of things your armor will mitigate a percentage of incoming damage, but all damage you take degrades the armor's condition (thus degrading its protection).

You can try sprinting in and gunning everyone down, but unless you have armor far superior to your opponents' weapons there's a fair chance they'll take you out before you can get them all. Likewise running from cover to cover constantly spraying lead doesn't result in many hits. Most fights you actually have to strategize your approach. My tactic of choice is to sneak as close to the targets as I can get, crouch behind cover, aim, and use the lean keys to peak out for quick bursts before ducking back out of sight before you get gunned down. Because the landscape isn't open the targets may find some cover of their own, requiring you to sprint to a new location with a better view and repeating the process.

Annotated Map of the Zone

Although nothing on the scale of Oblivion, the game world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is relatively open to exploration. There are a few areas that are mission-gated but otherwise you're free to wander the Zone completing optional side missions and accumulating equipment to use or sell. Occasionally you'll receive a message on your PDA of a friendly camp under attack that you can help defend, and if you do you can return to a nearby NPC for a reward.

I've seen complaints leveled against S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that the story is weak but personally I enjoyed it. I will say that the story is not spoon fed to you, and in that regards it reminds me of Half-Life 2, where much of the back story was conveyed through context. While many of the main story missions do provide plot information, the game doesn't assemble everything into a neat package and provide you with a summation of what's going on. But if you just click through the missions you can still follow Strelok into the heart of the zone for the endgame.

There are no "Oh no! Plot twist!" alarms throughout the game but if you pursue all of the leads you have, then you are rewarded with the ability to put together the last few pieces of the puzzle to find out what really is going on with the Zone. I appreciate the questions that are finally answered and feel that the search is worth it but I can understand how some gamers prefer a more straightforward story.

From a gameplay standpoint S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was in enjoyable experience but the game's subtle strength is its atmosphere. You start in a relatively urban area with only a few scattered buildings but their various states of disrepair foreshadow the deeper areas of the Zone.  As you procede, you find former industrial areas that has been long abandoned and are now crumbling apart.  Ruined vehicles and other machinery are scattered about and everything feels old, dirty, and broken.  The sky overhead is almost always ominously overcast but occasionally the sun peeks through directly.  When it does it almost feels alien, washing out the landscape.  You really get the impression that bright cheerful sunlight just doesn't belong in the Zone.

You don't just take in the environment visually - the music and ambient effects help immerse you into your surroundings.  On more than one occasion I dismissed sound effects as being looped for mood until their source suddenly leaped out and catch me off guard.  The tension created by knowing if the source is nearby and preparing to jump you or distant and interacting with other AI can lead for some enjoyably creepy experiences.

Surprise Attack

On the enemy side of things S.T.A.L.K.E.R. keeps the supernatural and mutated threats rare and usually springs them on you when the human threats lull you into a false sense of security.  S.T.A.L.K.E.R. quickly trains you to deal with human enemies, and that only highlights the appearance of these "monsters."

I can remember in vivid detail the first time I encountered a bloodsucker and a poltergeist - the former due to the way it watched me deal with some mercs before springing out of the darkness where it had hid and the latter due to the great environment in which they're first met.  And that's not even considering the first controller you come across.

Considering S.T.A.L.K.E.R. can be found in bargain bins at this point, it's definitely worth picking up if you can find it.

La Corse, the game MVP

First, our Pirates game. Normally in a free-for-all someone inevitably gets teamed up on, either accidentally or purposefully.  To prevent that we teamed up, having each player on a team bring all the points worth of ships, islands, and treasures that they would bring to a normal game.  Chad and Wayne brought a small, powerful fleet but Pat brought three solid gunships and I brought a nicely crewed La Corse and three gold runners.

My first impression was that we were going to get slaughtered, but with the open table my gold runners made a huge impact.  Those ships got us a quick lead by running to and from islands quickly, letting us place a fortress by turn three.  Chad and Wayne got overconfident and didn't coordinate, which resulted in Wayne overextending his flag ship and getting whittled down my La Corse.  Pat's gunships swooped in after loading some treasure to hammer Chad and Wayne's fleet until I was able to use my empty treasure runners to screen Pat's ships for their last gold delivery.

Paradis de la Mer

After the game we all remarked how fantastic having a fortress was.  It wasn't even the cannons that they support so much as the ability to claim an entire island worth of gold quickly as well as let ships dump off their treasure without having to return all the way to a home island.  Considering as long as you don't let your opponent sack them they effectively cost you nothing and there's no reason not to bring a couple just in case you can build one in-game.

Our last observation was that there were certain crew types that were almost auto-includes depending on a ship's roll in your fleet.  One of my biggest complaints about Pirates is that it's a move or shoot game - you can't do both.  Unless you have a captain on your ship that is.  And helmsmen grant additional speed that can be a godsend to some of the slower gunships.  Even smaller gold runners are vastly improved by the inclusion of a 1-point explorer who lets them explore wild islands for free.

Last Night on Earth Game Setup

After our Pirates game we switched to Last Night on Earth, which is probably best described as Zombie HeroQuest for those who remember that old Milton-Bradly board game.  At first glance the zombies don't seem to stand a chance with their 1-space movement compared to the d6 of the survivors and the weapons the survivors can find, but that's not necessarily the case.

The zombie player gets special cards to play each round (while survivors only get their equivalent for staying put and searching buildings).  These cards let the zombies move faster or perform better in combat, as well as causing traditional zombie genre events in the game; for example the Bickering card that can be played on two heroes in the same space to make them miss their next turn.

Last Night on Earth Greens

Heroes can get some weapons that are pretty nice, but each weapon has a condition for which it will run out of fuel/ammo or break - anywhere from 1/6 to 1/3 chance after each combat/use.  Take for example the revolver, which can shoot a zombie from 3 spaces away (a moderate range).  It hits (kills) on a 4+ on a d6 but if a 1 is rolled the revolver runs out of ammo and is discarded.  In our three games, four revolvers were found.  Every time a revolver was fired, a 1 was rolled.  Every. Single. Time.  On the other hand the few times the shotgun or chainsaw came out they caused massive damage before going away.

From a theme perspective Last Night on Earth does a fair job of mimicking many zombie genre stereotypes.  Our first game had a single player killed early before the survivors organized and went on a rampage, dropping zombies left and right.  However as soon as their weapons ran out and the zombie players had a good draw on zombie ability cards the tide turned and the survivors were quickly overrun.

As mentioned The event cards are very thematic - like the Bickering card above, the Shamble card that lets zombies move faster, and the Unnecessary Sacrifice card that the zombie player can play to make one survivor take a hit for another.  In addition zombies are fairly easy to fend off in melee (assuming you're not vastly out numbered) but actually killing one without a melee weapon is extremely hard.

One nice feature is that there are rules for having two zombie players, which is the reason the zombies come in two colors.  As mentioned above when I played the zombie player in the first game, I took out one survivor quickly.  Instead of him sitting out the rest of the game I gave him control of half the zombies and switched the game to the two-zombie-player version on the fly.  I was nice to be able to keep the player involved after the death of his character.

Overall I think I prefer the cooperative play of games like Arkham Horror but Last Night on Earth was a good time.  Chad mentioned he'd probably be looking into the expansions and we'll probably play again our next board game night.

It's been a little over six months since I first tried out Privateer Press's  Monsterpocalypse collectible miniatures game at GenCon 08.  Although initial reactions showed potential I decided to hold off forming a definite opinion until I played the game more and got a better feel for it.  So now that I've had the chance to do so and have reevaluated the game I've determined that my opinion hasn't changed much, and that really isn't a good thing.

I'm just not sold on Monsterpocalypse. It just doesn't reach out and grab me and shake the dice (and bucks!) out of my pockets like some of the other games I've played do.  There's a lot of good aspects of the game - the resource management aspect is interesting and the monster-on-monster power-attack-fueled combat is phenomenal.  The mechanics themselves are pretty solid.  There's some ambiguity on special rule interaction but on the whole the rules just work.

On the other hand so much of the game is built around the units - using them to claim areas of the map or killing your opponent's units to build up power dice.  It really takes a lot of the focus away from the monster.  Units have so many responsibilities and tasks to perform and so many options to do so just so that a couple turns in your monster can really start trashing the opponent - assuming he's not keeping away while his units do a lot of the work for him.

If there were no units in Monsterpocalypse or they were de-emphacized to the point where monsters did basically all the work I would enjoy the game much more.  That wasn't destined to happen though -- the myriad of unit types and the fact that you field fifteen in your army was necessary to promote unit booster sales.  That's just a key to maintaining the (IMO detrimental) collectable nature of the game.

I guess what it comes down to is that in a game about giant monsters smashing each others' face in, I don't think I should be spending over half my play-time dealing with units.  For me the kaiju genre has always been about the monsters, but too much of Monsterpocalypse emphasizes the units.  And IMO that's not a good thing.

That said if Monsterpocalypse was still insanely popular locally I'd probably keep playing but that's not the case here.  In the beginning there were always Monsterpocalypse games going on during open Warmachine/Hordes game nights locally (most MonPoc players were also WM/H players).  You don't see that anymore.  Monsterpocalypse has become "that tournament game" that only really gets played at organized events.  And our last two tournaments have had four players show up to in total.  That's not a thriving community.

Will the newest expansion I Chomp New York revitalize the community?  I really can't say.  But I can say it's not likely to rekindle my interest even if it does.  It's not a bad game and I realize there are players who really enjoy it, but for me the game has just lost its luster.

My junk is tiny

Most weekends I host a weekly roleplaying game at my house, but this week instead of getting out the rule books and character sheets I got my junk out and set it on the table.

I game with the hosts of the Fear the Boot podcast, and after mentioning Wizkid's Pirates pocket model game during  a recording a fan donated a ton of ships for them to use at Fear the Con 2, the upcoming local convention here in St. Louis that they're hosting March 6th - 7th.

We started out picking out a few ships (each of which has a points value) to throw into a few test fleets to learn the game.  Each ships have a different number of health/speed/cargo capacity and a point cost so you can mix and match to create a strategy that favors one goal or the other if you want.  I'm not going to give the game an in-depth review here - it's been around a while and there are far more detailed descriptions out there on the intertubes by far more experienced players - but I will say it was a fun little game.

Le Loup Garou

After learning the basics we all chose a nationality and picked a few ships to have small personal collections.  Then we sat down and put together over sixty 40-point fleets from the rest of the collection.  These fleets will be taken to Fear the Con and put at an open gaming table for attendees to grab, assemble, play the game, and then keep if they want them.  Should be a good time so if you want to swing by and try a game and get some free plasticard ships, please do!

Overall the game was good clean fun.  I don't think it's the type of game I'd want as my primary game but I foresee enjoying having a small fleet around to bring out for random games with my gaming group.  The game is collectible and so you could easily fall into the trap of victory through fatter wallet but you'd probably get a lot of millage out of  picking up a few packs to serve as a community pool for you and your gamers to build fleets in to play as a side game.

I need to ram more stuff with my junk!

I haven't really kept up with the video game hobby in a while so when I was asked to contribute I had to think a while before I came up with something I could actually write about.  In the end I wound up agreeing to write an intermittent series on some of the older PC games that I've played as a sort of "blast from the past," starting with Deus Ex.

With the launch of the Iron Agenda keeping up with Game Scribe posts (let alone here) is going to be a challenge for me, but Moondog and Ravious certainly maintain regular updates.  If you're interested in following a few gamers' romp through their virtual playgrounds be sure to check out their site!

Privateer Press brought a sneak peak release of Monsterpocalypse starter boxes and boosters to GenCon this year and I decided to pick one up to see how the game played.  I've never been a fan of collectible games but Monsterpocalypse's relatively lax rarity distribution seemed like it might not be too bad for casual play.  After a few games I'm not 100% sold but the game showed enough promise to be worth a critical review.

The first thing that's worth mentioning is the complexity of the game.  Giant robots and monsters rampaging around a city - complete with plastic buildings and a nice gridded map - screams beer and pretzels to me, but Monsterpocalypse is no beer and pretzel game.  Between dice management, territory control, terrain effects, positioning, and the models' special rules there is a lot to think about during play.

That said all of the Demos ran at the Privateer Press booth ignored the models' special rules and terrain effects.  These games ran faster and were much more beer-and-pretzel than the more complex games I played using all of the advanced rules.  Just playing with the basic rules are certainly a possibility if that's what you prefer and it's just as fun.

Now as I said I'm not a big fan of collectible games.  Personally I'd love it if Privateer Press took a cue from Fantasy Flight and decided to repackage Monsterpocalypse as a non-collectible game but I don't see that happening.  Fortunately PP has at least done a few things to minimize the impact of the collectible aspect.  First, all monster miniatures are going to be the same rarity.  That means you have a 1/10 chance of getting any specific monster in a blister instead of 1/100 for a certain rare.

Second, each Unit Blister sold will contain four models - two commons, one uncommon, and one rare.  Comparing this with the number of models in the first set (14 common, 10 uncommon, 12 rare) and you can see that the distribution isn't too terrible.  Still collectible is collectible and if I get into Monsterpocalypse it will be through the secondary market that is sure to develop for the game.

It's also worth noting here that you can use units from other factions in your army, but they cost you extra to bring into play.  So if you really want to play the Godzilla faction but your units are predominantly Martians you can still play the Lizard King, you'll just have less units on the board at a time.

As far as the game pieces themselves go, many of the models look far better in person than they have online.  The Terrasaurs and World Eaters are especially attractive, though the Martians and Shadow Sun Syndicate are both rather sub-par.  I think it's because areas on those two factions that aren't translucent plastic are typically unshaded metallic paints so they lack the light shading and highlighting of the better paint jobs.  Simply put, the organic models look far better than their metallic compatriots.

The two major game pieces of Monsterpocalypse are a mixed bag.  The sliding damage tracker that is included for tracking the hits your monster takes is sheer genius - it completely eliminates the need for tokens on the board or dry erase markers for cards.  However this is offset by the failure that is the Monsterpocalypse dice.  Any game that uses "special" non-standard dice immediately loses points in my book.

Let's face it, we gamers can be clumsy folk, and especially when gaming in a game store it's easy to let dice slip (or be knocked off a table) and get lost in couches, under shelves, or what have you.  And since each of the city maps has the pools in which you place your dice at the outer corners it's not going to be hard for an errant elbow or rampaging offspring to send the dice scattering.  The smaller lighter dice PP has used means they'll be easier to lose and the non-standard sides means you can't just go out and replace missing dice by raiding your old board game collection.  They unique dice certainly add an interesting aspect of the game (and are required for the three die types the game uses) but in my opinion they're not all that practical.

As I mentioned in the intro, game play can range from simple to complex depending on which rule set you use.  The basic rules involve you having two pools of action dice - one for your monster and one for all of your units.  Each turn you choose to activate either your units or monster, and move dice from the appropriate pool into the other one as you move, attack, or perform other actions.  So as your monster rampages around the city he adds dice for to your unit's pool for them to use during your next activation.

All units have 1 hit point, your monsters have 5-9, and most attacks do a single point of damage.  However monsters take additional damage for being thrown through buildings or into fires and clouds of radioactive waste.  The game ends when your monster's two forms - his normal form and his "powered up" alpha or mega form - are destroyed.

From there you can ramp up the complexity by adding in the special effects of the map (rough terrain and cover) and special abilities of your monsters (which there are tons).  These advanced rules do add a layer of strategy that some people will enjoy but it pushes the game right past beer-and-pretzel level very quickly so the casual gamer may not enjoy it as much.

As a gamer who prefers slightly complex rules, I found Monsterpocalypse to be a nice game to play casually with my normal opponents as a diversion from our usual games.  Since we're willing to share our units and monsters to have a relatively even more interesting game the collectible aspect doesn't deter us as much but I am concerned when the game releases how big the "Victory through Credit Card" aspect will come into play.  But for now it's a solid game that's very enjoyable as long as you have the right expectations set regarding rules complexity.

Unfortunately the tour was cut short before it reached international fame when Mic's blaring rendition of Sabotage kept his wife from going to sleep upstairs.

WHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!! *cough* *wheeze*

When my fiancee had to bow out of our gaming session last night we wound up traveling to Luke's house for some Rock Band. While I'm not sure my opinion of rhythm games has been flipped around completely like Chad's I still had a lot of fun. I just think that what made the game so enjoyable for me was the social aspect - acting like a drum-beating lunatic along side my friends. I don't think I'll pickup Guitar Hero or anything (aside from the fact that I don't own a console that would play it) but I'll definitely be willing to throw down with my band mates again in the future.